Macaroons, Anyone?

What is it about exclusive private clubs and -- macaroons?

As a newcomer to Pittsburgh and outsider in the local social scene, about the only thing that's still noteworthy to me about the ultra-exclusive, ultra-historical private Duquesne Club is its reputation for serving extraordinary macaroon cookies. (Recipe here, among other places.) How times have changed. Consider this 1940 Time magazine account of the workings of the Club. Do white male tycoons similarly rule the city today? Answer: Not really. The source of Pittsburgh's economic momentum, if not its gravitas, has shifted from the Golden Triangle to Oakland. More on that in a different post.

But the macaroons persist, at least so long as the Club is able to bake its own. Consider the plight of the ultra-exclusive, ultra-historical private Century Association in New York, which also takes pride in its distinctive macaroons. The Century Association's macaroon supplier recently left the business, leaving the Association and its members scrambling for a replacement.

The Century Association and the Duquesne Club are not alone in their affection for these little cookies. Macaroons have a special place at private clubs. "Private Clubs" magazine suggests that the best macaroon of all is found at The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. The curious thing, though, is that the club phenomenon is British. Macaroons are not. So what's with the macaroon?
I've eaten Duquesne Club macaroons, but my family is partial to the macaroons made for everyone by Pittsburgh's own Enrico Biscotti.

[Updated: "Century Club" was corrected to read "Century Association." Sorry.]

Pittsburgh's Lost Opportunities

Do read Jim Marczak's piece in today's P-G on how Pittsburgh can grow and thrive -- if it reaches out regionally and globally. Jim is CEO of SYCOR AMERICAs. Jim Russell at Burgh Diaspora connects the dots.

Being Neighborly

The website for "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Days, going on all this week, lists an impressive roster of sponsors.

Missing in action are some of the largest, wealthiest, and most important service organizations in Southwestern Pennsylvania:

The region's colleges and universities.
The region's largest non-profit health care system.
The region's law firms.

Wear a sweater on Thursday, which would have been Fred Rogers's 80th birthday.

Paris or London?

The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership recently announced its "Paris to Pittsburgh" program to encourage Downtown restaurant and store owners to make their spaces more urbane, and the streets more lively. Take a look at the program website, and the Post-Gazette's coverage.

One of the goals of the Paris to Pittsburgh program is to make store and restaurant fronts more transparent, with large window or garage door-like openings that will allow patrons to move freely between the indoor and outdoor spaces.

"This is a way to activate [the sidewalks] and to create more dynamic space for people to use," said Mike Edwards, the partnership's president and chief executive officer.

But did the PDP pick the wrong European city?

The current issue of The Economist has an interesting feature that compares the recent past and futures of Paris and London. Paris is full of charm and nostalgia. It's a glorious monument to French history and culture. London, however, is the city of the present, and it appears to be the city of the global future.

[O]fficials at London's City Hall bristle at the idea that the two cities can be compared. “We don't think of ourselves as in competition with Paris,” sniffs John Ross, Mr Livingstone's economic adviser. “We've won that contest. We measure ourselves against New York.”

Yet as recently as 1992, when the Maastricht treaty to launch the euro was signed, bankers in London were fretting about losing out to the financial centres within the future euro zone, notably Paris and Frankfurt. Back then, the pre-eminence of the British capital was far from assured. At the time, Jack Lang was the cool, polo-necked French Socialist culture minister, rejuvenating Paris with glass and steel, while his British equivalent was in charge of something stuffily called the “Department for National Heritage”. London's streets were gridlocked, its riverside was drab, its food inedible and coffee undrinkable.

What went right for the city?

A number of things. First, Big Bang, the deregulation of the financial-services sector in 1986, propelled foreign investment into the City of London (though the markets were rocky in some subsequent years). The Labour government elected in 1997 kept the city attractive with stable economic management and with corporate and income taxes that were low, at least by French standards—though these are set to rise for
non-domiciled residents. And it cared about the image of the capital, too. The Labour government not only spent freely on the arts, but also abandoned its resistance to using private sponsorship to build new galleries and museums. In doing so, it helped to shrug off a British indifference towards the look of London. Daring modern architecture proclaimed that this was a true world city.

Perhaps most important, the city has adopted a guiding creed that belongs neither to the political left nor the right: openness to change. “London has flourished not because it has sorted out its transport, or its city management, but because it opened its borders,” argues Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics. These days, there is nothing particularly British about London, bar its tolerance of chaos. It has embraced globalisation to become an international city, while Paris has remained unapologetically French.

The story goes on to note that London's dynamism comes with costs. The cost of living is extraordinarily high; planning for growth has been haphazard at best; its dependence on financial services means that the local economy is prone to wild swings; there are gross inequities in access to public services; crime and poverty are serious problems in some areas.

Still, as the Pittsburgh region reaches for a global identity, should it be looking to Paris? One critic quoted by The Economist notes, “Paris doesn't take risks, it lacks audacity,” he says. “How can you create a desire to innovate when the ambient culture is oriented towards preservation?”

250 Reasons to Promote Pittsburgh

I just stumbled across this LiveJournal blog: 250 Reasons to Promote Pittsburgh in its 250th year. The author describes herself as a stay-at-home mom and architect, and the entries are nicely written and illustrated. Some are usual suspects (Jan. 4: Primanti Bros.); some are not (Jan. 21: Overnight stay in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright).

This looks like a labor of love, rather than a marketing campaign. It's the kind of thing that could generate authentic interest in celebrating Pittsburgh's 250th birthday. Check it out.

Crowdsourcing Community Revitalization

Spotted at I Heart Pgh:

The communities of Braddock, North Braddock, Rankin, and Swissvale—through
the Tri-Boro Development Forum (TBDF)—are sponsoring an open contest to find
practical solutions to pressing problems. Because no matter how hard we try, the
problems we face are too large for any one community to solve on their own.

The Challenge will: · Connect people from around the region and across the
globe through public forums, multimedia technology, and social networking online
and off. · Capitalize on every person’s area of expertise, from residents and
local leaders to experts in community development, to make collaboration easier
and more effective· Take advantage of other communities’ successful efforts to
solve problems that are similar to our own. · Engage the community to make civic
affairs fun, with the chance to win cash prizes!

Interested? The Community 2.0 Challenge kickoff event is Wednesday, March
19, 2008, at the Braddock Carnegie Library. The event will include an open house
from 4:00-6:00pm to familiarize you with the history and geography of the area.
An open forum from 6:00-7:00pm will give people an opportunity to voice their
concerns. A speaker panel from 7:00-8:00pm will lend their advice on how to
articulate these concerns into practical action. And don’t worry if you’re not
from around here, all the information you’ll need will be available online at
our web site.

When: Wednesday March 19th at 4:00 pm Open House, 6:00 pm Community
ForumWhere: Braddock Carnegie Library – 419 Library Street in Braddock The
Contest runs from March 19th through May 31st Contact: Ron Gaydos, VP Community
& Economic Development
Heritage Health Foundation, Inc.
445 Fourth
Street, Braddock, PA 15104 Phone: (412) 351-0535 E-mail: rgaydos @ hhfi.org
Website: http://www.tbdfconnects.org

It all kicks off with a Community Forum for input to bring up and confirm
community priorities.

WEDNESDAY MARCH 19TH – BRADDOCK CARNEGIE LIBRARY
4:00 PM: Open House / Community Service Fair
6:00 PM: Community Forum – We need to hear from you!
7:00 PM: Focus Our Action – Short Term and Long Term Steps to Take
Next
Refreshments will be served.
For more information contact Ron Gaydos
at (412) 351-0535 or rgaydos @ hhfi.org

Pittsburgh Quarterly and IntoPittsburgh

The newest issue of Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine is out and online, and with it editor/publisher Doug Heuck is making PQ the communications and media home of the IntoPittsburgh initiative.

From Doug's Letter from the Publisher:

A little over a year ago, on a frigid Saturday in January, I had what you might call a date with destiny. I'd agreed to meet three men in a bar in East Liberty. I'd never been there, but I'd read about the place. As I looked for the street and then the number, I considered what I really knew about these men. Very little. All three, however, had developed a reputation in certain circles for their “activities.”

I got out of the car and walked quickly to the door. I hesitated, then took a deep breath and walked in. I quickly glanced around the place. The front room was empty with a faint smell of old cigarettes. Around the corner, I heard laugher, and there they were — all three of them just sitting there — bloggers.

Yes, bloggers — those flouters of journalistic tradition. Well, we had a great talk, and an idea began to emerge. And as the months rolled by, the group grewand the idea did too. The idea is simple: build a bridge between Pittsburgh and Pittsburghers everywhere. Connect Pittsburghers far and wide with this city and region. Welcome their input and effort in the ever evolving quest to build the greatest city in the world. That's my version of it at least.

The effort now has a name — Into Pittsburgh — and you can see an early version of the logo on this page. You'll hear more about Into Pittsburgh as time goes by. For now, you can start to get involved in the dialogue by going to ittsburghquarterly.com. We have a growing community of bloggers represented, many of them writers whose work you've seen in the magazine.

Pittsburghquarterly.com is undergoing its own renaissance, changing from a sleepy little site to one that we hope you agree has a lot to offer. We have a weekly report from web editor and veteran Pittsburgh journalist Jeffery Fraser. If you want an excellent writer's report on the most interesting and pertinent events of the week, try Jeff's blog.

I was one of those three people having lunch with Doug a little over a year ago, along with Jim Morris and Jim Russell. Since that meeting, we've moved slowly but deliberately, simultaneously figuring out what the message is and what the group can do. We assembled the document still known as the Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh (still online here), enlisted the growing band of like-minded souls now collected under the IntoPittsburgh umbrella, and identified some more concrete but still related projects -- among them Jim Russell's Diaspora initiative, and what I've been writing about here as Pittsburgh 2.0. The Tech Council is part of the loop, and IW, and alumni organizations at local universities, and community organizers. It's a big pool of energy, and it's getting bigger all the time.

What is IntoPittsburgh? My version of the message is this: It's a group of people around the world who want to leverage Pittsburgh's distributed social and financial capital to improve the Pittsburgh region itself -- economically, culturally, and socially. How can you be a part of it? One -- self-identify. Tag your blog posts. Ask me to put your name on my "Pittsburgh 2.0" list to the left. Two -- reach out. Go to LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com), sign up, and search for and join the IntoPittsburgh group. Three -- get involved. IntoPittsburgh is a message, not one specific program. Figure out how your organization (network, family, friends) can participate -- socially, culturally, economically. Click on some of the Pittsburgh 2.0 profiles to the left for examples.

PQ gives all of this a great platform, with one foot squarely in the world of traditional media and another exploring the blogosphere and related new media. One of PQ's commitments in this area is "PQ Blog Central," which includes posts by PQ staff (as Doug notes above) as well as by Jim Russell and Chris Allison. Watch that space as IntoPittsburgh evolves.

Mixed Venture News

Surely there is muted cheering in Hazelwood, at the South Side Works, in Wexford, and on Craig Street. Pittsburgh finished near the top in a recent survey that measured venture capital growth. As the Post-Gazette put it:

The MoneyTree report, by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, used information from Thomson Financial to determine the five fastest growing regions for venture capital investment.

And where was Pittsburgh?

Second, right behind New Mexico.

Pop City helpfully provided a link to the report itself.

And nice as this is, now for some friendly criticism:

First: When it comes to both the pace of investment and the absolute dollar amounts invested, Pittsburgh has nowhere to go but up. This Yahoo! News story shares the details. The periodic Money Tree report (not the data excerpted for this bit of news) doesn't even include Pittsburgh as one of its default "regions" for benchmarking venture capital investments. "Western Pennsylvania" is part of the "Midwest," which also includes Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan.

Second: PR surrounding the report, like this very interesting Pop City feature about Pittsburgh's being on the cusp of being an angel "darling," tends to obscure some key data about local capital markets. Pop City buries this nugget in the very last graf. Silicon Valley angel investor John Cornwell says:

Right now, Pittsburgh does not have a critical mass of institutional investors and VCs who are local. When you are dealing with early stage companies, they need a lot of hand-holding. It requires a local presence. To break that geographic barrier, Pittsburgh needs development of a local critical mass of funding capability. As deals are funded locally and you raise serious seeds of $50 million…it’s just a matter of time before you have the big players setting up shop locally.

Meaning, of course, that the big players aren't here yet. I read the Pop City feature as arguing that local angel funders and service firms are regarded by the Silicon Valley investment community as too unsophisticated, on the whole, to justify a serious look. In venture terms, Pittsburgh is not the big leagues. Maybe we're a AAA city (he wrote, hopefully). Maybe we're AA. To move up a notch or two, Pittsburgh needs to do some of the things that San Diego (for example) did 15 or 20 years ago -- welcome outside expertise, and turn up the heat on the native business community.

Third, venture capital investments (and friends-and-family money, angel funding, and so on) don't translate into a lot of near-term job growth. Or, they generate and sustain jobs only indirectly, because lawyers and accountants and printers and food servers, and lots of other people in service businesses feed off of new investment in their clients. The deals noted the MoneyTree report may turn into long-term job growth supported directly by funded companies, but that's a very, very uncertain proposition.

Fourth, the uncertain prospects for funded companies include (i) a very high failure rate, and (ii) the fact that lots of early-stage companies that are founded locally may succeed somewhere else. Highlighting the growth rate and the raw dollars invested is a good thing. Even better would be to highlight the failure rate -- not to pick on losers, but to point out that in a risk-oriented economy, risk-takers often fail, yet they should be praised for taking risks. Couple data on the failure rate with what I hope would be improvement in the rate at which folks who fail in company A (or, for that matter, succeed with company A) get back in the local start-up game with company B.

Both phenomena are natural parts of the national and international entrepreneurial ecology.

So, here's the report that I'd like to see -- but doubt that I will:

1 - Local companies receiving VC and angel funding in 2005 and 2006
2 - Companies on that list that are still operating in 2008
3 - Companies on that list that are still operating locally in 2008
4 - Local companies founded since 2005 or 2006 by people who were employed in 2005 or 2006 by companies on list (1)

Copyright Lecture in Pittsburgh

While I've been traveling this Spring and slowing building networks via Pittsburgh 2.0, I've also been planning some events at Pitt's law school. Here's one that may be interesting to the broader culture and tech communities in Pittsburgh:

On Thursday, March 20, Pitt Law will host the 2008 Distinguished Lecture in Intellectual Property Law, presented by Professor Jessica Litman of the University of Michigan.

Professor Litman is one of the country's leading authorities on copyright law; her recent work focuses on copyright's fair use doctrine and its relationship to contemporary problems of "personal use" -- as in using your digital content. Her lecture is titled "Copyright Reform." If you're an artist, librarian, designer, or technologist, you should find something interesting in what she has to say.

Professor Litman's website is here. Her recent and well-known book, Digital Copyright, can be purchased here.

In addition to being a superstar scholar, Professor Litman is a Pittsburgh native. Her brother, Harry Litman, was US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Roslyn Litman, was and is a leading lawyer in Pittsburgh and an alum of Pitt's law school.

The lecture is on Thursday, March 20 from 3 pm to 4:30 pm, in the moot court room at Pitt's law school. That's at the corner of Forbes and Bouquet in Oakland, across the street from the Original Hot Dog shop.

It's free and open to the public. If you're a lawyer and would like PA CLE credit, then the lecture has been approved for 1.5 hours of credit, and that will cost you a $25 fee, payable at the door. No RSVP is necessary. A brightly-colored postcard, which we mailed to Allegheny County lawyers, is reproduced here.

I hope to see you there.